Apple Updates Logic Pro and MainStage, Adds 64-Bit Compatibility

[al2o3cr]

Attn posters: please recalibrate your sarcasm detectors

64 bit? Hint: Wrap your arms tightly around your old audio apps, no matter what these people say about clarity. Remember that rush and return to old 60s and 70s gear? The value of old amplifiers and equalizers and mixing boards sky-rocketed. Vintage 16 bit recording is going to be huge in a few years after people complain about the weird lack of character and hyper-clarity of 64 bit recording.

For convenience we'll record in 16 bit and then edit in 64 bit.

Think of one word, people: TONE.

To anybody arguing with this - just don't. It's either sarcasm, or Poe's law in effect. I'm sure you could actually find an "audiophile" that would tell you they could hear the difference between 32 bit addressing and 64, but he'd be the kind of toolbag that spends $500 on an Ethernet cable, or $300 on an "acoustically balanced" wooden KNOB...

 

[oban14]

So...

My early 2008 macpro 8core unfortunately isn't 64bit compatible so I am running the 32bit version of logic 9 and it seems loads better, some of my biggest projects still give me an error but no crashes, and my medium sized projects which were giving memory issues seem to be OK.

Genius.

(although I stil may get a 12-core...)

I own the same Mac Pro and have never heard of it not being 64 bit compatible. I have booted snow leopard in 64 bit.

What makes you think it isn't 64 bit compatible?

 

[Anaemik]

Right now all (most?) audio programs have internal 32-bit editing, regardless if you choose to record in 16-bit or 24-bit. I don't believe there are any 64-bit capable audio interfaces out right now.

By editing I assume you mean processing? If so, then yes, most modern DAWs process all audio internally at 32bit float. ProTools, however, I believe processes at 48 bit integer, and Reaper is 64 bit float throughout. I believe there's also a version of Sonar with a 64 bit engine, although I haven't looked into this enough to confirm.

 

[ManWithAPlan]

I own the same Mac Pro and have never heard of it not being 64 bit compatible. I have booted snow leopard in 64 bit.

What makes you think it isn't 64 bit compatible?

Agreed. I too own an Early 2008 Mac Pro with 8 cores and its been running Snow Leopard Server in 64 bit mode since October. It defaults to 32bit when you first install, but you change the switch from the cli to force 64-bit OS automatically as the new default per Apple guideline on this. With 32GB of RAM, I enjoy a nice performance boost with many apps, soon to be Logic included.

 

[Anaemik]

To anybody arguing with this - just don't. It's either sarcasm, or Poe's law in effect. I'm sure you could actually find an "audiophile" that would tell you they could hear the difference between 32 bit addressing and 64, but he'd be the kind of toolbag that spends $500 on an Ethernet cable, or $300 on an "acoustically balanced" wooden KNOB...

No audiophile would have a case for sound quality differences in 64 bit addressing. They may have a case when it came to 64 bit processing by the engine, but this would in all likelihood tend to go unnoticed under most conditions.

As there seems to be a bunch of confusion on this issue, here's a quote by Reaper's Justin Frankel explaining their decision to use a 64 bit *engine*.

For the purposes of this post I'll compare 64 bit floating point with 32 bit floating point. Integer samples have their own advantages and disadvantages compared to floating point.

As a bit of background, floating point numbers are capable of representing a range of numbers that is MUCH larger than an integer sample of the same number of bits, which is useful, but the drawback is that they can't represent EXACTLY many numbers in that range.

Both 32 bit and 64 bit floating point numbers can exactly represent any normalized 24 bit integer sample.

However when processing audio (applying FX, summing signals, etc), there are operations that can end up with results that will not be exactly represented by the floating point numbers. So tiny errors are introduced.

These errors are arguably not a big deal, as they are very small and should typically be well below the precision of any ADC or DAC anyway, but they can also add up. Using 64 bit floating point keeps these errors many orders of magnitude smaller.

The chief disadvantages that I can see for 64 bit floating point are increased memory use, increased memory bandwidth use (which also leads to increased CPU use, though less and less on the newer Athlon64 and Core2s), and more chance of denormalization related slowdown.

We chose at the start to use 64 bit throughout, planning on newer faster machines with more memory and memory bandwidth, and so that we wouldn't have to deal with upgrading everything if it became important later.

 

[puckhead193]

FCS next..?

maybe with new mac pros in a few weeks

 

[csimmons]

By editing I assume you mean processing? If so, then yes, most modern DAWs process all audio internally at 32bit float. ProTools, however, I believe processes at 48 bit integer, and Reaper is 64 bit float throughout. I believe there's also a version of Sonar with a 64 bit engine, although I haven't looked into this enough to confirm.

Pro Tools processes at 48 bit fixed point engine, while Logic and a few other DAW's use 32 bit floating point integer.

 

[-=XX=-Nephilim]

No rewire is a BIG bummer for me. I read through the list and didn't see anything that really bothered me until I got to that. Nuts!

No Rewire means further waiting for me...

I use Logic EXCLUSIVELY in the company of Reason...

So pass for me for now...

 

[Anaemik]

Pro Tools processes at 48 bit fixed point engine, while Logic and a few other DAW's use 32 bit floating point integer.

That's what I said But "floating point integer" is a contradiction in terms. Integer in this case would mean "fixed point". So it can't be "floating point, fixed point"

 

[lPHONE]

bye bye Pro Tools

 

[champ01]

bye bye Pro Tools

Whatever!

Some use Protools, some use Cubase, some run Ableton, others run Logic

Why do people always think that with 1 update users gonna drop their DAW.

Nobody does!!!

 

[nrajack]

A couple of things:
For those bitching about lack of Rewire support - get on Propellerhead's case about that. Unless and until they update rewire to 64 bit, we'll always have that problem. And they've shown no urge to do the update. Of course, you could always use both the 32 bit version and 64 bit versions of Logic on the same machine depending on whether you need Rewire.

Sonar 8 has the ability to work with a 32 bit or 64 bit processing engine, whether on a 32 bit cpu machine or a 64 bit processor machine, 32 bit or 64 bit os.

 

[csimmons]

That's what I said But "floating point integer" is a contradiction in terms. Integer in this case would mean "fixed point". So it can't be "floating point, fixed point"

Sorry, of course you're right, my bad!

 

[csimmons]

A couple of things:
For those bitching about lack of Rewire support - get on Propellerhead's case about that. Unless and until they update rewire to 64 bit, we'll always have that problem. And they've shown no urge to do the update. Of course, you could always use both the 32 bit version and 64 bit versions of Logic on the same machine depending on whether you need Rewire.

Right. The ball is now squarely in the 3rd party vendors court.

Oh well; good thing that Logic 9 has the fabulous Flex mode "slicing", which should compensate for the lack of 64-bit Recycle support. Lack of MP3 conversion is also not such a big deal, since I do all conversion in iTunes or Waveburner anyway.

 

[MorphingDragon]

To anybody arguing with this - just don't. It's either sarcasm, or Poe's law in effect. I'm sure you could actually find an "audiophile" that would tell you they could hear the difference between 32 bit addressing and 64, but he'd be the kind of toolbag that spends $500 on an Ethernet cable, or $300 on an "acoustically balanced" wooden KNOB...

I can tell the difference between 16 and 24 for sure. Just like I can tell between .AAC and .FLAC/WAV. But 32 to 64, thats above human recognition in difference. Its as useless as 48-bit colour.

 

[edmundo]

If its pure Objective-C/Cocoa thats true.

If it has C++ or C they need to be ported. FCS was probably made in Carbon so...

Depending on the way C is coded, there should be no need for "port" either. Sadly, most C code just assumes 32bit pointers, or 32bit int, or sizeof(void*) == sizeof(int). All of which might be wrong in 64bit (in the case of OSX, it's LP64 so pointers are 64bit, int is 32 and sizeof(void*) != sizeof(int)). If it's not the software's C code it's the libraries it calls instead.

And of course iTunes uses Carbon, which doesn't exist as a 64b API.

 

[MorphingDragon]

Depending on the way C is coded, there should be no need for "port" either. Sadly, most C code just assumes 32bit pointers, or 32bit int, or sizeof(void*) == sizeof(int). All of which might be wrong in 64bit (in the case of OSX, it's LP64 so pointers are 64bit, int is 32 and sizeof(void*) != sizeof(int)). If it's not the software's C code it's the libraries it calls instead.

And of course iTunes uses Carbon, which doesn't exist as a 64b API.

iTunes 9 and Finder 10.6 are Cocoa.

 

[Anaemik]

I can tell the difference between 16 and 24 for sure. Just like I can tell between .AAC and .FLAC/WAV. But 32 to 64, thats above human recognition in difference. Its as useless as 48-bit colour.

It's not to do with the final output resolution, it's to do with how audio is summed and processed internally before being passed to a final 16 or 24 bit file. When audio streams (effectively numbers) are being processed with EQ, reverb, delays etc, effectively large calculations are being made which benefit from a high bit depth. If your DAW only processed internally at 16 or 24 bits, you would almost certainly notice the effect of anything more than the most trivial of processing or summing.

On a side note, 48 bit colour is only 16 bits per channel. That's most certainly not useless at all, and I'm completely puzzled as to why you might claim it is.

 

[milo]

No REX file import or edit in 64 bit mode is a very big deal, since I use a lot of loops.

Have you tried out Stylus RMX? It can import REX loops, and gives a lot of flexibility in using them.

Having a 64-bit Intel CPU doesn't mean that Apple supports the 64-bit kernel on your system.

You can run 64-bit apps with a 32-bit kernel, but performance suffers due to the shifts between 32-bit mode and 64-bit mode.

But even with 32 bit kernel, you can still run the app in 64 bit mode, with most of the benefit. And performance should still be better than running the app at 32 - from benchmarks I've seen, running 64 bit kernel only gives about 5% additional performance. If there have been benchmarks with a bigger difference I'd like to see them.

Just lost a weeks work because of a project file that crashed Logic on startup in 9.0.2 with only three days until deadline. If I update again now am I only going to end up with a Logic that is EVEN MORE buggy?!

Haven't heard of any new bugs. It's a free update and it leaves 9.0.2 intact on your hard drive, so I don't see much downside to trying it out.

You do realize that what you're demanding is A LOT of work, right?

You do realize that Apple has had years already to update to Cocoa and prep for 64 bit, right?

Lack of Rewire support is a deal breaker.

I assume the guys who wrote Rewire will have to update it to 64 bit. Either way, it should get updated in a future release, as well as all the others on that list. Euphonix already released an update last night.

 

[milo]

Why do people always think that with 1 update users gonna drop their DAW.

Not with one update. The question is whether we'll see PT 64 in six months, or a year, or longer. They still aren't running 64 on the PC.

iTunes 9 and Finder 10.6 are Cocoa.

So what's the holdup going 64 bit?

 

[Winni]

So what's the holdup going 64 bit?

What would be the benefit? There is zero reason to upgrade Finder and iTunes to 64-Bit versions, because they wouldn't benefit from it at all. It would only add more development and debugging complexity to applications that just do not require the wider address range for the things that they do.

Video editing, image processing and huge hard disk recording projects can take advantage of a 64-Bit address space. File copying and simple audio playback certainly don't.

If Finder finally became truly multi-threaded, now THAT would bring some directly noticeable benefits and it would immediately reduce the amounts of spinning beach balls that we always have to see.

 

[csimmons]

Have you tried out Stylus RMX? It can import REX loops, and gives a lot of flexibility in using them.

I own all of Spectrasonics products since 2002, so yes. The issue is that Propellerheads has not yet made Recycle or Rewire 64-bit compatible, and I believe that Stylus is 64-bit only in the respect of how much memory it can address; the audio engine itself is still 32-bit. Don't quote me on that, though.

Anyway, the REX thing is easily worked around in Logic 9 via the Flex mode SLICING + the new "Convert to Sampler Track" command, which does what Recycle basically does.

 

[Digitalclips]

Agreed. I too own an Early 2008 Mac Pro with 8 cores and its been running Snow Leopard Server in 64 bit mode since October. It defaults to 32bit when you first install, but you change the switch from the cli to force 64-bit OS automatically as the new default per Apple guideline on this. With 32GB of RAM, I enjoy a nice performance boost with many apps, soon to be Logic included.

I find all my old apps work fine booted into 64 bit kernel.

Here are some useful threads for the curious on this subject.

http://osxdaily.com/category/snow-leopard/page/2/

http://osxdaily.com/2009/09/10/force-snow-leopard-to-use-64-bit-kernel/#comments

 

[SpinThis!]

iTunes 9 and Finder 10.6 are Cocoa.

iTunes is still Carbon.

 

[pbrooks]

Great update

I updated and now Logic 9.1 crashes when I attempt to open an audio region in the editing window.